Re: Hardt & Negri on Genoa

On Sun, 22 Jul 2001, Louis Proyect wrote:

> On Sun, 22 Jul 2001 11:34:15 -0400, Gregory Wilpert wrote:
> 
> >The passage being referred to here is, I believe, on page 309 and
> >following, under the heading, "The Pyramid of Global Constitution"
> >
> >"At the narrow pinnacle of the pyramid there is one superpower, the
> >United States, that holds the hegemony over the global use of force.
> >. .
> Unfortunately, this business about "the pyramid" is utterly devoid of 
> the Marxist method and falls within the rather bogus notion of 
> "constitutionalism" that Hardt-Negri prop up with readings from 
> Polybius and the American founding fathers et al.

Unfortunately, this response is utterly devoid (and not for the first
time) of an honest attempt to confront the issue that was raised.  Mr.
Proyect challenged my argument that Empire is still hierarchical by
claiming it was an interpretation unsupported by the text.  Now, he has
changed his tune, and says that the argument is un-Marxist (a claim I
never made; nor did the text, incidentally).

Similarly, in the passage below, Mr. Proyect pulls a single sentence (one
which is qualified by the word "seem", at that) out of context (and then
supports his argument by flinging around some colorful adjectives like
"bogus" and "miscreant"; I for one am surprised he has not yet brought up 
the "renegade Kautsky"), in spite of the fact that the longer passage
reproduced here by Mr. Wilpert makes it patently clear that states are
still actors in the system (although they no longer hold the dominant
position they once did).  "Defeat" does not equal "extermination" (though
this may be a hard lesson to swallow for those who divide the world into
"proletarian revolutionaries" and "lost causes"). 

It is said that in reading, the fundamentalist confronts not the text as
is, but rather imagines the ideal text, which is unerring and applicable
to all contexts.  When confronted with a different text, the
fundamentalist can only interpret it in light of the ideal text, or not at
all.  One thing I learned from Giovanni Arrighi is that in critiquing a
book, it is important to engage with the book that was written, not with
the book you wish was written.

Finally, why is Zizek is "miscreant"?  Is it because he does not accept
Milosevic as the model socialist democrat?

> Key to this is understanding drawn from the world of "globalization" 
> theory, namely that the nation-state no longer matters. On page 306, 
> just prior to Wilpert's citation, the authors state, "It would seem, 
> then, that the state has been defeated and corporations rule the 
> world!" This is David Korten-ism, not Marxism. As I have stated 
> repeatedly, I never would have taken the trouble to answer the two 
> professors if their book had not been touted in the bourgeois press 
> (and by the miscreant Zizek) as a Communist Manifesto for the 21st 
> century.
> 
> 

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bstremli@binghamton.edu